11:14 Then the word of the Lord came to me: 11:15 “Son of man, your brothers, 1 your relatives, 2 and the whole house of Israel, all of them are those to whom the inhabitants of Jerusalem 3 have said, ‘They have gone 4 far away from the Lord; to us this land has been given as a possession.’
11:16 “Therefore say: ‘This is what the sovereign Lord says: Although I have removed them far away among the nations and have dispersed them among the countries, I have been a little 5 sanctuary for them among the lands where they have gone.’
11:17 “Therefore say: ‘This is what the sovereign Lord says: When I regather you from the peoples and assemble you from the lands where you have been dispersed, I will give you back the country of Israel.’
11:18 “When they return to it, they will remove from it all its detestable things and all its abominations. 11:19 I will give them one heart and I will put a new spirit within them; 6 I will remove the hearts of stone from their bodies 7 and I will give them tender hearts, 8 11:20 so that they may follow my statutes and observe my regulations and carry them out. Then they will be my people, and I will be their God. 9 11:21 But those whose hearts are devoted to detestable things and abominations, I hereby repay them for what they have done, 10 says the sovereign Lord.”
11:22 Then the cherubim spread 11 their wings with their wheels alongside them while the glory of the God of Israel hovered above them. 11:23 The glory of the Lord rose up from within the city and stopped 12 over the mountain east of it. 11:24 Then a wind 13 lifted me up and carried me to the exiles in Babylonia, 14 in the vision given to me by the Spirit of God.
Then the vision I had seen went up from me. 11:25 So I told the exiles everything 15 the Lord had shown me.
1 tc The MT reads “your brothers, your brothers” either for empahsis (D. I. Block, Ezekiel [NICOT], 1:341, n. 1; 346) or as a result of dittography.
2 tc The MT reads גְאֻלָּתֶךָ (gÿ’ullatekha, “your redemption-men”), referring to the relatives responsible for deliverance in times of hardship (see Lev 25:25-55). The LXX and Syriac read “your fellow exiles,” assuming an underlying Hebrew text of גָלוּתֶךָ (galutekha) or having read the א (aleph) as an internal mater lectionis for holem.
3 map For location see Map5-B1; Map6-F3; Map7-E2; Map8-F2; Map10-B3; JP1-F4; JP2-F4; JP3-F4; JP4-F4.
4 tc The MT has an imperative form (“go far!”), but it may be read with different vowels as a perfect verb (“they have gone far”).
5 tn Or “have been partially a sanctuary”; others take this as temporal (cf. NASB, NIV, NRSV “a little while”).
6 tc The MT reads “you”; many Hebrew
7 tn Heb “their flesh.”
8 tn Heb “heart of flesh.”
9 sn The expression They will be my people, and I will be their God occurs as a promise to Abraham (Gen 17:8), Moses (Exod 6:7), and the nation (Exod 29:45).
10 tn Heb “their way on their head I have placed.”
11 tn Heb “lifted.”
12 tn Heb “stood.”
13 tn Or “spirit.” See note on “wind” in 2:2.
14 tn Heb “to Chaldea.”
15 tn Heb “all the words of.”